American Worker Wages Would Be $20,000 A Year Higher Without Reagan/Bush Style Tax Policies

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/14374

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on November 4, 2010 - 2:59pm
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By Doug Cunningham

: “Think about this, the bottom 50 million workers – that’s one in three workers in America – you know what their average pay is? Six thousand dollars.”

The real picture of what’s happening to American workers, their wages, their jobs and their future prospects is frightening. And according to author and financial columnist David Cay Johnston the damage done is caused by tax, economic and trade policies that are systematically dismantling the working and middle classes in America. Johnston says data from the Social Security administration shows that from 1950-1980 income for the majority of workers at the base of our economy grew faster than any other segment. But when the Reagan revolution, and later George W. Bush, cut taxes for the wealthy worker wages took a dive. If Reagan’s policies had not been adopted, Johnston says, it would mean 20 grand a year more in your pocket.

: “The average wage in this country would be twenty thousand dollars a year higher. People would have four hundred dollars a week more income on average if we’d continued the policies we previously had and all else had been equal.”

Johnston says a reversal of the Reagan and Bush tax and economic policies would be a very good thing for jobs creation and worker wages.

: “When we had high taxes we had economic growth. When we had high taxes we had higher wages. When we had high taxes we had more jobs, and job growth. And we need to recognize that we’ve been sold a bill of goods here that is discouraging economic growth, discouraging a growing number of jobs at home, that literally is subsidizing manufacturers to move jobs out of America and send them to China.”

[Lasher]

1. And our solution is more of the same.

More neoliberalism, AKA Reaganomics on steroids. More privatization (charter schools), more 'free' trade (South Korea FTA coming right up), more tax cuts for the rich (no Bush tax cut left behind), more attacks on our social programs (hear those cat food commission footsteps?).

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

[Turbineguy]

2. But they would only spend it foolishly

better to give that money to Banksters who would spend it wisely.

[tanyev]

3. Marking to read later.

[Demstud]

4. I'm 30yo and I make just over $200/week

And my dad's in his 50's and has gone from $50,000/year to less than $20,000. I'm going back to school now, which helps me have some hope for the future since I get some grants and decent loans, and luckily I've got the brains to study an area that should make it fairly easy for me to get a job when I graduate (though work makes things more difficult for me than they normally would be). I'll tell our story more completely when I get back from class. It demonstrates a pretty vicious cycle since I helped destroy my dad's income, in a way.

[Omaha Steve]

5. Kick

[katnapped]

6. If Republicans had their way

American workers would be making ZERO

[Pool Hall Ace]

7. good read

and of course, not surprising.

[Hannah Bell]

8. knr